11.9.2012 CONSECRATION III

comment in journal on 11.1 in reflection of entry in prayer journal 10.28..
i am learning that when i allow something i know to be wrong in my life it opens the door to sin multiplying and dominating. God pretty clearly was letting me know He wanted me to give myself completely to Him. i would not do this. there were too many 'non-sinful' things in my life that i enjoyed and did not want to give up. hence the following scenario unfolded over the better part of a year's time in my life..

regarding my addictive behavior:
beginning in earnest during 2011
the year i originally thought would be the first 'full time service to the Lord '
...which would continue for the rest of my life
(the year the Lord spoke to me about giving everything to Him..of consecrating myself fully to Him)
 rejecting that
(too high a price!)
i subconsciously sought my meaning in
sports (rather than in God)
which then,
without me consciously realizing it,
took (maybe 'demanded' is a better word)
progressively larger chunks,
not only of my time
but my mind
and my affections,
it grew from tv (at first sports, then they got me watching movies i secretly abominated...i was somehow able to not allow this to continue)
to christian magazines (only two, but i HAD to read them)..
to newspapers and then
secular news magazines (a growing number)..
to addictive tv..
to radio..
to addictive radio (i still can almost 'smell' the disgusting way in which the sports 'talk radio' would savage, one after another, human beings playing a game and trying to do their best...absolutely repulsive in my heart but i had to keep getting more and more sports info and that was the only way..that is the point where i knew i was truly addicted) and the growing sports mania which fed them...which was encroaching more and more upon my life to the point of a subtle, insidious (is it not always so in) addiction.

at this time i began to pray
to cry out for help and deliverance
and the Lord took all of it away
john 7.17 says ,
'if any man is WILLING to do His will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God...'

God brought me to the point where i was willing. when He completely took it away, i knew it was Him and not me. i had absolutely no power to stop. then i simply stopped..it all...without any effort, angst or longing. that's when You know it is a work of God.

when a thing is of God there is great power. all the above, which had such a hold on my life for that time, completely left that day...leaving only the two christian magazines in a non-addictive way. i only have one word to say.
HALLELUJAH. i thank You for setting me free Lord.

..quoting from my journal of
11.1...'the Lord took away (what is noted above) in june 2012.
is He now moving me to ?  i don't know yet. but i sense the same power as i experienced in what is related above..
1. get up at 4 a.m. EVERY MORNING
2. RUN every other day.
3. quiet time (one hour divided between prayer and reading through the bible in a year)
4. breakfast (1 hour)
5. NEXT work hard at one of the following for 8 hours (40 hour MAX  per week)
-is there anyone who You are leading me to help?
-if not, is there any work for pay to do right now?
-if neither of the above, work at 54 (my house) with the goal of establishing a clean, maintained, orderly home ASAP.
6. BE ALERT TO wasting time.
7. after 5 pm is for the Lord. (right now being alone with the Lord seems of utmost importance...forget about running around to church gatherings or of purely self interest with no edification in the Lord. forget about being with people other than for the purpose of exhortation (hebrews 3.13-4), prayer, the word, mutual sharing/examining of current spiritual state (acts 2.42) or sharing the gospel of the kingdom (mk. 16.15).
8. no book reading over .5 hour a day....and m a y b e more extensive on the sixth day of the week (this, at this time, seems mixed in my heart...it is a bit doubtful for it easily can become an idol for me...but great good has come to me spiritually thereby. so this standard along with the cry for constant spiritual awareness and discernment...)
9. abstinence from any food (ie. ice cream is the worse temptation) eaten for taste or any other reason but to gain strength. (ecclessiastes 10.17)
10. continue to move away from anything like intimacy with any woman, young or old, especially those i deem 'spiritual'. (i see more and more the wisdom in a complete, yet not an unnatural or 'weird' separation of the sexes...especially in spiritual matters and matters of the heart. they are still friends but now there is a plexiglass wall between.)

i always thought consecration was once and for all event. my father claimed a second work of grace in which he experienced a once for all filling of the Holy Spirit. i disagreed with his belief, with john wesley, that this included an end to all WILLFUL sin. i can line up passages in the bible on my side...but i still wonder. he had many things about his life that i am hard pressed to find another explanation for. we were always estranged due to my (now clearly seen, then unconscious of) arrogant pride and wickedness, but at heart, even then, i admired his character traits (fruit of the Spirit?) and the way he lived his life. he's already forgiven me..just like my heavenly Father.

i still ponder entire sanctification claimed by my father and many others in church history. i could not say i have any experience such as they report and can be seen in their lives. i am an odd duck. my salvation experience is anything but what might be called simple and normative...yet i KNOW He lives within me..i KNOW the sweet fellowship, the forgiveness of sins, the comfort, the guidance and counsel...and that He will never desert me...but, no matter what happens, will bring me, through the shed blood of Jesus Christ His Son...to Himself at last.

just as salvation has been piecemeal and chaotic, so seems sanctification in my life. right now He is winnowing out of my life all the shit that is in me...but i think it impossible for Him to ever use me in His service until He gives me the heart transplant spoken of in ezekiel 36...until He fills me with His love for people....until He lets me see them as He does.

back to journal..
11.5..'great spiritual struggle in my life'...these words come to mind from the account of when God established His covenant with abraham..'now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon abram and behold TERROR and GREAT DARKNESS fell upon him'..genesis 15.12. the capitalized words although not exactly matching my experience they are similar and connotative of what i am going through these last few days. something funky is going on. i am experiencing a sort of darkness, confusion, a haze, very weak and flacid prayer, temptation to 'give up' (doing what God seems to be leading me to do (ie. list above)...myriad, strong accusations, drugged-like sleep for long periods of time with no discernable normal reason..
..just shared this with nate (our oldest son) over the phone and asked prayer..immediately have a very real sense of 'lightening' of the general oppression.

...this last causes me to reflect that God has so moved in my life that i am in a position of being quite profoundly alone:
1. i have been moved out of the relatively warm and comfortable leidy church family
2. my 'calling' to speak the truth in love (ephesians 4.15) has almost uniformly lost me relationships. maybe i am doing so in a strictly literal manner when the proper way to do so sounds very different...i just don't know. i just keep looking at what Jesus said  (but how, what manner, with what kind of spirit did He do it?! i'm sure it wasn't sweet and syrupy or 'nice'..he said it and they wanted to destroy him...oh Lord it is probably because i don't love people like You! please show me, change me, fill me with You so it comes across the way it did from You..help me please!
3. my time at mision evangelica has turned out not at all the way i might have expected. it seems, in a weird way, that i am like frozen in glass..i'm not real..i still totally freeze up when spoken to or trying to speak (and yet i can praise and pray somewhat freely in spanish...this makes friendship difficult to impossible. most of all real fellowship is not possible. the result is despite some real degree of a surface type of friendliness i still view myself, and probably viewed, as an outsider. may God humble me and give me the boldness to
-stay attached, hang around, hang out, look stupid, talk stupid, make mistakes...but 'be among'..why does this frighten me so, Lord?
maybe their relative aloofness is a mirror image of my own toward them. o Lord have pity on me and help.
4. i have lessening time and interest in talking about the things of the world that everyone talks of and that propensity is growing.
5. i seem to meet or know few people who seem concerned enough about their relationship with Christ..few who seem aware (concerned?) about their great sinfulness and constant failure to be who He saved them to be. (am i the only 'crazy' who struggles against all this? ..the bible, especially Jesus' words are pointed painfully to all different kinds of things amiss!! this experience is a great and growing horror to me as i would think that this would be what MARKED true church fellowship or what those in it were constantly focused on.
6. i know i do not have a genuine love for people...the kind described by Jesus and the word generally. this is probably the cause of a break on my side. i probably have all kinds of wickedness (ie. pride etc) which keeps people away. (it may be a cop out but i see Jesus as profoundly alone, even among His closeset disciples...they seem light years away...such as the time right after He told them (again) of His imminent suffering and death when they were arguing about who was the greatest among them! or, worse, asking preferment in heaven!!  not a scintilla of even understanding let alone concern for what He said, what He was about to face..all alone. therefore it is easy for this bad boy to rationalize self-unseen wickedness within the thought 'i'm alone for the same reasons Jesus was!!!! just another example of unbelievable human rationalization.
7. in the past several years God has been revealing my subconscious self. one of the most astounding areas is my hatred for other people. within this year He has given me Jesus' commands in luke 6.27-8;36-8 to 'meditate-pray whenever i am overcome with a spasm of hatred for someone. it has already been used by Him to start making real change in the way i view people. i use them as them as the 'bones' of prayer for individuals who rise in my mind as, hated, for whatever sin i am ascribing to them currently, grows. i find them a real 'spiritual cure' of sorts for hatred and judgmentalism. i find that these sins of mine in reaction to their sins are therby evaporated and not only that but i actually am experiencing a degree of heart change, attitude chang and 'what i do in reference to them' change...which is encouraging..

while this has been good for me, a help and a blessing from god, it has made me relize that this may be the common state of the old nature in everyone (either subconsciously or consciously) and has taken a good bit of my rather naive and rosy view of human nature.

when i think of this my mind can go to john 2.23b-25
('...many believed in His name, beholding His signs which He was doing. but Jesus, on His part, was not entrusting Himself to them, for He knew all me, and because He..knew what was in man'.)
and become a 'proof text' for 'distance' from people.
but no sooner do i seek rationaliztion for my own aloofness than i am reminded of God's love, the love that caused Him to give Himslef to die a horrible death, though personally Innocent, for men who are 'helpless', 'ungodly', 'sinners', 'enemies' (romans 5.6-11).. i see His tender heart in isaiah 15.5a; 16.9,11 toward men who He is destroying..and i say,
you are not like God if you protect yourslef against the worst of men. and back to luke 6 the mind goes..'love your enemies'..

as larry norman sings, '..you may be a righteous rocker or a holy roller...you can be most anything...but you ain't nothin' without love.
consecrate me Lord. help me to give up all for You...but if i don't have Your love 'i ain't nothin'.